This is a poem for the unbeliever

The unbeliever’s name is me.

//

You are broken.

Broken heart, broken faith, broken head.

It’s okay to be broken.

You are a keeper of trauma.

It is not yours and it is yours.

It’s okay that you’re damaged.

You are failing.

Failing grades, failing laws, failing heart.

It’s okay that it hurts.

Because, you see,

Jesus came for the broken and the damaged and the failures

But they forgot to tell you that in church.

Almost the pastor’s kid

Swimming completely without peers or fellowship

Like that time you almost drowned during swimming lessons

Trying and trying and trying and trying and trying and TRYING—

(a gasp)

—and failing.

Jesus comes with you into your classrooms

But sits with you quietly.

You walk with God

But he doesn’t always speak up.

I know that it hurts

and you may never know why.

But no one gets to tell you that it doesn’t hurt.

It hurts.

It hurts so much that you wished you would die.

You thought about dying for a year

and a few more weeks and there would have been a plan

and few weeks more and—

You will celebrate two birthdays now.

The day you was born

and the day you decided you needed to live.

And it will hurt that no one heard you screaming

but you’re alive.

All that matters now is that you’re alive.

Everything else starts to seem small

when living through the day without thoughts of death becomes strange.

The grades don’t matter so much.

The broken heart is at least back in position.

And God does not hate you.

He is not ashamed.

This is not a punishment.

It is a season.

You will still hurt.

You might still want to die.

But you are alive.

The rest will come.

//

The burning in your chest is not hellfire

It’s a star.